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Carbon loss from an unprecedented Arctic tundra wildfire
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Arctic tundra soils store large amounts of carbon (C) in organic soil layers hundreds to thousands of years old that insulate, and in some cases maintain, permafrost soils1,2. Fire has been largely absent from most of this biome since the early Holocene epoch3, but its frequency and extent are increasing, probably in response to climate warming4. The effect of fires on the C balance of tundra landscapes, however, remains largely unknown. The Anaktuvuk River fire in 2007 burned 1,039 square kilometres of Alaska’s Arctic slope, making it the largest fire on record for the tundra biome and doubling the cumulative area burned since 1950 (ref. 5). Here we report that tundra ecosystems lost 2,016 6 435 g C m22 in the fire, an amount two orders of magnitude larger than annual net C exchange in undisturbed tundra6. Sixty per cent of this C loss was from soil organic matter, and radiocarbon dating of residual soil layers revealed that the maximum age of soil C lost was 50 years. Scaled to the entire burned area, the fire released approximately 2.1 teragrams of C to the atmosphere, an amount similar in magnitude to the annual net C sink for the entire Arctic tundra biome averaged over the last quarter of the twentieth century7. The mag- nitude of ecosystem C lost by fire, relative to both ecosystem and biome-scale fluxes, demonstrates that a climate-driven increase in tundra fire disturbance may represent a positive feedback, potentially offsetting Arctic greening 8 and influencing the net C balance of the tundra biome.
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Coastal habitats shield people and property from sea-level rise and storms
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Extreme weather, sea-level rise and degraded coastal ecosystems are placing people and property at greater risk of damage from coastal hazards 1–5. The likelihood and magnitude of losses may be reduced by intact reefs and coastal vegetation 1, especially when those habitats fringe vulnerable communities and infrastructure. Using five sea-level-rise scenarios, we calculate a hazard index for every 1 km2 of the United States coastline. We use this index to identify the most vulnerable people and property as indicated by being in the upper quartile of hazard for the nation’s coastline. The number of people, poor families, elderly and total value of residential property that are most exposed to hazards can be reduced by half if existing coastal habitats remain fully intact. Coastal habitats defend the greatest number of people and total property value in Florida, New York and California. Our analyses deliver the first national map of risk reduction owing to natural habitats and indicates where conservation and restoration of reefs and vegetation have the greatest potential to protect coastal communities.
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Delayed phenology and reduced fitness associated with climate change in a wild hibernator
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The most commonly reported ecological effects of climate change are shifts in phenologies, in particular of warmer spring temperatures leading to earlier timing of key events 1,2. Among animals, however, these reports have been heavily biased towards avian phenologies, whereas we still know comparatively little about other seasonal adaptations, such as mammalian hibernation. Here we show a significant delay (0.47 days per year, over a 20-year period) in the hibernation emergence date of adult females in a wild population of Columbian ground squirrels in Alberta, Canada. This finding was related to the climatic conditions at our study location: owing to within-individual phenotypic plasticity, females emerged later during years of lower spring temperature and delayed snowmelt. Although there has not been a significant annual trend in spring temperature, the date of snowmelt has become progressively later owing to an increasing prevalence of late-season snowstorms. Importantly, years of later emergence were also associated with decreased individual fitness. There has consequently been a decline in mean fitness (that is, population growth rate) across the past two decades. Our results show that plastic responses to climate change may be driven by climatic trends other than increasing temperature, and may be associated with declines in individual fitness and, hence, population viability.
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Forests fuel fish growth in freshwater deltas
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Aquatic ecosystems are fuelled by biogeochemical inputs from surrounding lands and within- lake primary production. Disturbances that change these inputs may affect how aquatic ecosystems function and deliver services vital to humans. Here we test, using a forest cover gradient across eight separate catchments, whether disturbances that remove terrestrial biomass lower organic matter inputs into freshwater lakes, thereby reducing food web productivity. We focus on deltas formed at the stream-lake interface where terrestrial-derived particulate material is deposited. We find that organic matter export increases from more forested catchments, enhancing bacterial biomass. This transfers energy upwards through communities of heavier zooplankton, leading to a fourfold increase in weights of plankti- vorous young-of-the-year fish. At least 34% of fish biomass is supported by terrestrial primary production, increasing to 66% with greater forest cover. Habitat tracers confirm fish were closely associated with individual catchments, demonstrating that watershed protection and restoration increase biomass in critical life-stages of fish.
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Genealogy of nature conservation: a political perspective
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Modern nature conservation is a product of post-Enlightenment modernity; I explore the heterogeneity of its conceptual and ideological background. The 19th century legacy comprises concern over human-caused extinctions; protests against excessive hunting and cruelty toward animals; utilitarian care for natural resources; and romantic sensibility concerning the value of nature for human health and spirituality. The 20th century added into conservation thinking increasing consciousness about human biospheric dependence; efforts to identify appropriate conservation targets; and most recently concern over the loss of biodiversity. The politics of nature conservation has taken shape within the framework of politics of nature, that is, choices vis-á-vis nature that have been made either as deliberate decisions on resource use or as side-effects of subsistence practices of various types. Because of tensions and conflicts with alternative ways of using nature, formulating realistic conservation policies has been a complicated task. Problems and uncertainties emerge: pursuing material aspirations of the current world society will necessarily bring about damage to ecological systems of the Earth. The way forward is to identify feasible alternatives in the midst of the tensions and ambiguities that arise, and to open up space for carrying through conservation initiatives.
Keywords
conservation thought, conservation policy, conservation governance, utilitarian conservation, romanticism, genealogy, framing, normativity, normative order, action space
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Observed increase in local cooling effect of deforestation at higher latitudes
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Deforestation in mid- to high latitudes is hypothesized to have the potential to cool the Earth’s surface by altering biophysical processes1–3. In climate models of continental-scale land clearing, the cooling is triggered by increases in surface albedo and is reinforced by a land albedo–sea ice feedback 4,5. This feedback is crucial in the model predictions; without it other biophysical processes may overwhelm the albedo effect to generate warming instead5. Ongoing land-use activities, such as land management for climate mitigation, are occurring at local scales (hectares) presumably too small to generate the feedback, and it is not known whether the intrinsic biophysical mechanism on its own can change the surface temperature in a consistent manner6,7. Nor has the effect of deforestation on climate been demonstrated over large areas from direct observations. Here we show that surface air temper- ature is lower in open land than in nearby forested land. The effect is 0.85 6 0.44 K (mean 6 one standard deviation) northwards of 456N and 0.2160.53K southwards. Below 356N there is weak evidence that deforestation leads to warming. Results are based on comparisons of temperature at forested eddy covariance towers in the USA and Canada and, as a proxy for small areas of cleared land, nearby surface weather stations. Night-time temperature changes unrelated to changes in surface albedo are an important contributor to the overall cooling effect. The observed latitudinal dependence is consistent with theoretical expectation of changes in energy loss from convection and radiation across latitudes in both the daytime and night-time phase of the diurnal cycle, the latter of which remains uncertain in climate models8.
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The Next Dust Bowl
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Drought is the most pressing problem caused by climate change. It receives too little attention, says Joseph Romm.
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The rebound effect is overplayed
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Increasing energy efficiency brings emissions savings. Claims that it backfires are a distraction, say Kenneth Gillingham and colleagues.
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Comment: The end of cheap coal
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New forecasts suggest that coal reserves will run out faster than many believe. Energy policies relying on cheap coal have no future, say Richard Heinberg and David Fridley.
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Civil conflicts are associated with the global climate
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It has been proposed that changes in global climate have been responsible for episodes of widespread violence and even the collapse of civilizations 1,2. Yet previous studies have not shown that violence can be attributed to the global climate, only that random weather events might be correlated with conflict in some cases 3–7. Here we directly associate planetary-scale climate changes with global patterns of civil conflict by examining the dominant inter- annual mode of the modern climate 8–10, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Historians have argued that ENSO may have driven global patterns of civil conflict in the distant past11–13, a hypothesis that we extend to the modern era and test quantitatively. Using data from 1950 to 2004, we show that the probability of new civil conflicts arising throughout the tropics doubles during El Nino years relative to La Nina years. This result, which indicates that ENSO may have had a role in 21% of all civil conflicts since 1950, is the first demonstration that the stability of modern societies relates strongly to the global climate.
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